-Caveat Lector-
Wall Street Journal
Friday, January 19, 2001
Farewell
Bill Clinton's last speech? We can only hope.
The question going into Bill Clinton's farewell speech last night
was this: Is this the last speech of the Clinton presidency, or
the first speech of the new Clinton era? It was very much the
latter, which is why he never said the word "goodbye" or
"farewell."
There was a time--it lasted more than 200 years--when American
presidents came from America, journeyed to Washington to serve
and then, when they were done, followed the tradition of George
Washington and went back home to America, where they lived out
the rest of their lives.
The tradition underscored the ideal of citizens who left a good
life to serve their country at considerable cost, and who then,
work done, returned to normal life and the higher title of
citizen.
In modern times Harry Truman did this, and Dwight Eisenhower, and
Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, who went
back to the peanut business, and Ronald Reagan, who retired to
California. George Bush returned to Houston. But Bill Clinton
will never leave, and he made this clear when he said, �My days
in this office are nearly through, but my days of service, I
hope, are not.�. He has never been much interested in
traditions, or their meaning.
As a speech it was not terrible. He looked, finally, comfortable
in the Oval Office, as if he thought he belonged there. In
outlining his economic triumphs he congratulated the American
people--"you have risen to every new challenge"--in the same tone
with which on your bad days you congratulate your child for doing
well at school or sports. He said that he had taken the steps
and given the leadership that ignited the American economy, but
he noted that �I�ve tried to give all Americans the tools and
conditions to build the future.�
He claimed to have created �a new kind of government: smaller .
. . more effective.� He said, �Our schools are better.� And so a
presidency that began essentially with lies ends essentially with
lies. There is a lovely egg-like completeness and perfection to
this.
The speech was mostly a legacy speech, similar to the dozen or so
goodbye speeches and interviews with which Mr. Clinton has been
filling his last months in office. (Ronald Reagan gave only one
farewell interview and one farewell address, and that in
December, so as not to intrude on the new president's inaugural.
But he was old fashioned--and a gentleman.)
Once again, last night, Mr. Clinton argued the case for his
greatness--the economy up, a world at peace, Americans never so
happy. He refrained, however, from saying, as he has in speeches
in the past week, that it is possible some other president will
come along some day and be as good as he, nor did he note that
the wonderful things he has done he learned first in Arkansas.
He said he wanted to leave the American people with three
thoughts. The first was that we must stay the course on fiscal
restraint. By this he meant: Don't pass Bush's tax cut.
His second point, and a long one it was, was that global poverty
"requires more than compassion." I think a deconstruction of this
thought is: It requires programs, i.e., liberal programs. In
other words: When Osama bin Laden and his henchmen blow up an
American city, it won't be my fault, it will be President Bush's.
His third thought was that America is a nation of many ethnic and
racial groups, and we must continue to honor this fact and help
those in need. We need programs for this, he suggested.
"Compassion isn't enough," he said, in the speech's clearest shot
at Mr. Bush. What he was really saying was: That compassionate
conservative guy is a big phony.
That the speech was lacking in grace or largeness goes without
saying, that it offered seemingly wise and even avuncular words
with a subtext of political aggression and competitiveness was in
its way perfect. That is what Mr. Clinton's career has been,
aggression offered as sympathy.
I watched the speech with a gathering of Democratic and
Republican speechwriters, veterans of the craft who approach
presidential speeches with a mixture of sophistication and
sympathy. It was a sparkling group, and I always feel honored to
be among them, for history walks the room when they are there.
Their reviews of the speech:
>From a Democrat: "Listening to Bill Clinton is like eating cotton
candy. it's sweet going down but it's only air."
>From another Democrat: "He didn't say, 'So long'; he said, 'I'll
see you Monday.' "
The Republicans were similarly negative.
There is a great clich� in America, among conservatives, that the
American elite like Mr. Clinton, while the good common people
are more likely to deplore him. But in my experience, no one has
contempt for Mr. Clinton like sophisticated Americans,
particularly sophisticated and accomplished liberals. I think it
is to some degree snobbery--they do see him now as a low-rent oaf
with a squat and grasping wife--but it is more than that. They
understand what he has done in letting foreign nationals buy U.S.
foreign policy, and deep down they are not amused. They think he
is a weak egomaniac, a man who'll do anything from fear and
hunger. Also they've all been in therapy, and they see his
sickness. They know who he is.
But now he is over, or rather his presidency is. He will stay in
Washington and New York. I was interested to see that no one
back home in Arkansas seemed upset or surprised about this when
he went home to speak at the state house in Little Rock this
week. They knew he was never coming back, and they knew that he
was not really of them, but only using home as a base to stay
viable within the system.
Mr. Bush comes in tomorrow, and that is good. Even if he is a
bad president, he will be better than what we've got. There is
something I hope he does as soon as he gets into the White House.
It has to do with a fanciful, perhaps, sense of evil. I think
that all places of concentrated power have within them the
devil's little imps--little imps, unseen, sitting on the cornice
of the doorway in this office, giggling quietly in a corner on a
book case in that one. They are in all places of power I think
and they feel very much at home in such places, and the good
people working in them don't even sense their presence, have no
awareness of them, but get tripped up by them, tormented by them,
even wind up sometimes doing their work for them and not even
knowing it.
All White Houses have them. But in the one just ending the imps
ran wild. It would be a very good and important thing if Mr.
Bush invited in a fine and good priest, a wise and deep rabbi, a
faithful and loving minister, and had them pray together in that
house, and reanoint it, and send the imps, at least for a while,
on their way. Perhaps they could include the prayer of old John
Adams, that only good men serve in this great and stately
mansion.
It's good to start out clean. And it's good to begin any great
enterprise with prayers, which seems to be something the Bushes
know well.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal
and author of "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" (Regan Books,
2000). Her column appears Fridays.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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